How do you keep underwater oil pipelines safe from thousands of kilometers away—while battling salt spray, signal dropouts, and the wrath of the sea? In Indonesia, RACOM’s M!DGE router dove right in.
https//www.racom.eu/eng/case/securing-subsea-pipelines-in-indonesia
Challenge: Monitoring Subsea Pipelines in Harsh Offshore Conditions
Indonesia’s PT Starcom Solusindo has been delivering robust network solutions since 2000, serving national industries with both licensed and unlicensed wireless infrastructure. One of their most demanding recent projects involved safeguarding submarine pipelines at PERTAMINA (Persero), Indonesia’s state-owned oil and gas company.
At three of PERTAMINA’s refineries, Single Point Mooring (SPM) systems — offshore buoys that facilitate crude oil transfers from tankers — required constant leak monitoring. Given the pipelines stretch underwater to coastal terminals, any undetected breach could result in significant environmental and economic consequences.
Solution: Rugged, Programmable Cellular Connectivity
Starcom needed a highly reliable communication backbone between offshore and onshore systems. The chosen solution had to be hardened for marine and industrial environments, capable of encrypted VPN tunneling, and programmable to meet custom protocol needs.
After evaluating several vendors, RACOM’s M!DGE cellular router stood out as the clear winner. Its industrial-grade design, powerful security stack, and open software architecture made it the ideal choice for this mission-critical deployment.
Each pipeline was equipped with two M!DGE units: one offshore and one onshore. Data from the leak detection system was transmitted through a secure OpenVPN tunnel, ensuring integrity across the link.
Custom SDK Application: Built to Specification
A major differentiator in this project was M!DGE’s support for RACOM’s Software Development Kit (SDK). The Starcom team, in collaboration with RACOM engineers, developed a custom TCP-based listener script that monitored WWAN1/WWAN2 status and MOBILE1 signal strength. It responded to requests using the ModbusTCP protocol, as required by the client, and delivered values into specific registers and byte locations tailored to PERTAMINA’s SCADA system.
This level of integration was critical in matching the customer’s expectations without the need for additional middleware.
Collaboration Across Continents
While Starcom provided the local know-how and on-site implementation, RACOM’s remote technical support team in the Czech Republic ensured seamless integration and configuration. The result was a stable, secure, and responsive monitoring system protecting vital infrastructure beneath the sea.
